Passenger Trains > Shoo fly, Shoo

I was tidying up my desktop today and ran across these two shots of the San Bruno shoo-fly from Caltrain's San Bruno Avenue grade separation, and station project, c2012.

The first shot, with the cab car leading, is a northbound running on the shoo-fly, approaching Angus Avenue, by the 7-Eleven.

In the second photo, a southbound approaches Angus Avenue on a rainy day.

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Really like the second image!

texchief1

Newbie railfan here, so,I don't understand some of the jargon yet. Please tell me what a shoo fly is and where it is in the pics.

TIA

A shoo-fly is a temporary set of tracks which takes a different route around the established route to accommodate construction or other activity that renders the original route unusable.

For example, when building a grade separation a shoo-fly will be employed to run trains around the construction project. When the construction is finished, trains return to the original route, and the shoo-fly is removed.

Another situation you might find a shoo-fly is detouring around a washout, or tunnel collapse.

In Rosalia, Washington, for example, where the Milwaukee Road once ran, they built a shoo-fly around a tunnel, which was eventually daylighted.

After the tunnel was gone and trains returned to the original alignment, the shoo-fly tracks were removed.

But today, more than a century later, you can still see in the hillside the grading done to accommodate the shoo-fly.

In my two Caltrain photos, the trains are running on the new shoo-fly tracks.


Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/25 10:28 by walstib.